Sunday, February 20, 2011

Words

The basic unit of language that we will consider in our study of English grammar is the sentence because that is the level at which grammar primarily operates. In order to do this, we need first to consider the items that make up a sentence : the words. Words must be in a certain order for us to understand a sentence.



MORPHEME
Words in a language consists of elements called morphemes. Basically, there are two types :
Free morpheme and bound morpheme.

Free morpheme
Morpheme that can stand freely by themselves as independent words.
Example : Fast, Tiger, Build, Are

Free morpheme can be further divided into two groups : 
(1) Lexical morpheme (Content words)
Content words allowed us to create an image of some kind in our minds.
Example : When we heard the word 'Tiger', we are able to conjure up a picture of a large stripe cat.

(2) Grammatical morpheme (Function words)
Function words show us relationship among content words, but by themselves, they do not have power to create an image in our mind.
Example : When we heard the word 'Are', we are dependent on content words to give this function word a meaning.

Bound morpheme
The elements that cannot stand freely and independently, like the suffix and prefix, are called bound morphemes because they are bound or connected to free morphemes.
Example : re-, -ness, -ous, -ed

Bound morphemes can be divided into two groups :
(1) Derivational morphemes
They allow us to make new words in the language and to change one grammatical category into another.
Example : State -> Restate
               Quiet -> Quietness
               Mystery -> Mysterious

(2) Inflectional morphemes
Their purpose is not to create new words or grammatical categories but rather to show the grammatical function of a word.
Example : Pencil -> Pencils
               Small -> Smaller
               Talk -> Talking

To learn more about words and morphemes, you can always refer to these following websites :







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